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Is yummy SEO site architecture even possible with ASP.NET?

I'm about to optimize a reasonably large website that has been developed with ASP.NET. My crawl diagnostics do not paint a pretty picture: overly dynamic URLs, loads of duplicate content, and 302 temporary redirects.

I found a helpful IIS extension on Scott Guthrie's blog that eliminates a lot of of the above issues.

But looking ahead, I need a solution for creating a "category" organized, flat site architecture.

What steps should I take with my development team in order to implement a site architecture that is highly-crawlable and user-friendly?

13 Responses

I don't think this question has anything to do about ASP.net itself. Crawlers look at the rendered html code, not the server side script, so no matter what language was used to code the website server side, you should look at the client side.

There are numerous ressources on SEOMoz that will guide you in making your website architecture "yummy". You might want to look into these, but there are others (use the search feature like I did) :

When it comes to linking, be sure to stay consistant with the way you link to your internal pages. Use Google Webmaster Tool and Bing Webmaster Center to manage URL parameters, use rel="canonical" tags and 301 redirects when needed.

Fantastic response. Thanks for highlighting out those two resources on SEO Moz. You are right to point out that "ASP.net" is just a server side language, and that the code itself never makes it to the web browser. The struggle is that 'ASP.net' has a tendency to render html in a non SEO-friendly manner compared to PHP or other development platforms.

I know the diagrams from your links will be a helpful illustration for the dev team as we proceed with our site optimization.

You guys are really scaring me. I just hired a development company to build an ecommerce site on aspdotnetstorefront. I chose asp.net because the site will eventually integrate with a microsoft/.net inventory management and order processing system.

What is it that I need to look out for? I was told that having .aspx at the end of my urls was no bid deal. If the site is planned well (flat architecture, etc.) what exactly is the problem? I just have not been able to understand.

The more I work with ASP.NET the less scared I am about its SEO implications. Be encouraged that you are building the site from the ground up, rather than optimizing an existing site.

The biggest thing to look out for is duplicate content. Make sure your developers are building pages that are unique and worthy of Google's crawl.

Also, if you plan on having user reviews enabled for your products, it may be helpful to set one product page as rel=canonical, so that you aren't confusing the SEs with lots of similar pages.

Example:

You have a page for blue widgets. Users can review the blue widget, but each new review becomes a new page. Since all the pages are about blue widgets, and share the same image content and product description, you want to canonicalize the original product page so it gets indexed.

Before you pay the final balance to your dev team, crawl the site with SEOMoz tools. If there is anything substantial, you can point it out to the developers.

Thanks for this link, David. It pointed me to a couple of potentially useful URL rewrite extensions. However, the bigger issue for me is still the sitemap. Any recommendations on how to get a flatter, more organized structure?

If you are already looking at a site rework under aspnet the have a look at incorperating this with MVC which offers a much more structured approach and allows handling of redirects 301 and produces much faster loading pages without all the cookie state stuffing of straight aspnet. It also handles security much better with attributes to control protocol and access rights.

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